Category Archives: experience

When I was 13 years old, my Dad bought me an almost $3000 computer system. It was an Apple //e, two floppy (5 and a quarter inch) disk drives, a dot matrix printer (“Imagewriter II” as I recall or if I really wanted to, I could go look since it I have it somewhere), VisiCalc spreadsheet software, and one of the best programs of its time, Broderbund’s The Print Shop. On arriving home, a few thousand poorer, my Mom asked, “He’s never going to be a programmer. Why did you get him a computer?”

The question stuck with me. Now, whenever I think of a crazy expense for my kids, I remind myself of my Dad’s vision. I learned a lot with that rig, and I’m grateful to my parents for their hard work.

In those days, I met other teens online via Electronic Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), and friendships grew from impromptu Saturday gatherings at Pizza Hut. There’d be a few old guys (retired Air Force), security contractors, and teenagers. As I grew older, learned to drive, the teens and I would pack into a car (or get our parents to drive us, albeit with suspicion in their eyes as to what we were up to). We’d visit Jatmon Insearch, also known as James Bullard. He ran one of the BBSs in town that made Apple //e software available for blazing fast download at 9600 baud.

Eventually, we all acquired on our software, and we’d share tips with each other, hang out. As I sat staring at my screen today, contemplating the power of Facebook and other social media to connect us, it occurred to me–for the first time in 25-30 years–to ask, What happened to those guys I hung out with?Here are their names and links:

Michael Muniz – his Dad was a chemist and we went to the same high school, Central Catholic Marianist High School. As a matter of fact, I lent him $80 bucks and never got it back! Ah well.

Nick Montfort – Works at MIT. Well, we always knew Nick was smart! I remember running into him one time at the UTSA Library, where he asked me, “As a teacher, do you leave right after school or do you hang around?” When I told him I hung around, he was pleased. It’s a question that I remember even now after all these years (it must have been my first year as a public school teacher back in 1990).

Stephen (don’t remember his last name) – A quiet young man who lived on a funny street…Armor, I think. Amazing what the brain recalls.

Victor Mux – My wife and I actually introduced him to his wife and he got me started with my first IBM compatible computer (an 8088).

Mark Ulmer – Works and lives in Arizona. Mark was the only person I knew who owned a Franklin computer, a clone of the Apple //e.

Wow…trip down memory lane. I imagine that today, my children won’t have trouble staying in touch with their childhood friends and acquaintances…instead of peering down the narrowing corridor of memory to a time long past, those relationships will remain alive and vibrant.

For now, for me, it’s enough to smile at times gone by and wish my childhood companions well.

Starting today, Around the Corner-mGuhlin.org is accepting donations in increments of $2.00. Why? $2.00 isn’t THAT big of a donation to make, and your timely aid will help me address an unanticipated expense. While I don’t want to go into that, if you think you can spare $2 for every blog entry that addresses your needs, I hope you’ll take a moment to donate!

My target goal is $3000 ($2.00 per person x 1500 donors). Since there are over 2000 subscribers to Around the Corner, I have hope.

Disclosure: Please be aware that donations received will NEVER influence the content of this blog or my opinions (except for gratitude). I will disclose anyone who submits a donation on this page. Whether a person donates anything also will not affect access to my blog.

On the way home from work yesterday, I listened to the NPR story of a 24 year old Chinese young woman and how her family and culture considered her “too old.” Although she wanted to marry for love, in the end, she would have to be realistic and marry because she didn’t want to get to 30 years of age and be left over…an unmarried woman who had achieved career goals but “failed at family.”

“I am single right now, and I am worried all the time. I have some foreign friends, they kept telling me that you are young, you are only 24, you should do whatever you want. And my parents, my family — my grandma, grandpa or my aunties, uncles — they are telling me, you are getting old. No girls will be wanted after 30, so you have to grab the guy that you have right now and get married,” Xie says…

“If by that time, I want to marry [a] guy, and I [don’t] love him that much — just because he checked all the [right] boxes, I think I will still marry him, but it’s going to be a very hard decision,” she says.

When asked if she is, in the end, a realist, she replies, with a heavy sigh: “Yeah, sadly, yes.”

That’s why, when I stumbled upon this picture while checking out Flickriver, a new way of viewing Flickr pictures, I had to post it here. Maybe the message will get through….

On Thursday, October 15, 2009, members of the TCEA TEC-SIG organization had the opportunity to listen to David Warlick. Below are my notes, and I hope to have more reflections and audio soon.

David began with sharing that he always begins his presentation with something he didn’t know yesterday. That was DoodleBuzz.com (updated thanks to comment by Lydia!), which allows you to graphically keep track of news.

“Begin your preso with something you didn’t know yesterday.” We have to rethink what it is to be educated, redefine the 21st Century–>Be a master learner as a teacher. If it’s our job to help children be lifelong learners, then that’s what we need to do.

You can find David’s handouts online at http://davidwarlick.com/handouts. If you blog the preso, make sure to use these tags: native, information, experience, warlick.

He shared that Anshut Sammar, 13 year old student…then he asked, What’s different?

What’s different is that this student doesn’t have ceilings. Ceilings were imposed by a non-networked world. Abundant access to information…it’s also difficult to contain If You want learners to excel, free their information…”containerless.”

He shared Assassin’s Creed 2 as an example of what games can do. What are the rules of the games? What are the goals? How do you use the rules to achieve the goals? It all begins with questions. About games, what is it about the experience that makes it an effective learning experience?

Fueled by questions…learn by asking questions. He introduced WeFeelFine.org as a vision of what is possible. David asked, “Imagine growing up in a world that is connected…profound implications on how students learn.” Some other web sites he shared–such as to demonstrate the visualization of Good Mornings (blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/goodmorning)–and Scratch. David discussed gold farming–preparing a character for online virtual world, then selling those virtual assets via eBay. This has been prohibited.

He mentioned Ian Fogarty from New Brunswick, Canada – creating labs manuals that are interactive. He also mentioned Amy McLeod, who asked her students to create movie trailers to motivate next year’s students to read books/plays like Shakespeare’s Othello.

Darren Kuropatwa was also mentioned positively for his work encouraging students to scribe math classes.

One of the memorable quotes David shared was that a student said:

My grammar is not good enough for my ideas…

David made the point that grammar is a tool that had value for communication. Some questions:

How does the assignment talk back?

Demands personal investment?

How is work valuable and to whom?

How am I assessing valuable mistakes?

It’s what you know that’s different that brings value to organizations.